


Moth to a Flame

by riseuplikeangels



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riseuplikeangels/pseuds/riseuplikeangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The winter formal arrives at Silas. Carmilla suddenly becomes obsessed with intention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moth to a Flame

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first Carmilla fanfic! It's also on my tumblr, which I'll put down at the bottom. Fluff abounds. Thank God for these two.

How strange it is, Carmilla thinks, that even with all of this, even with her mother’s watchful eye spreading, omniscient, omnipotent over the campus, even with the danger and the fear and the terror…

…people _still_ manage to fall all over themselves for a formal dance.

Silas is not a particularly large school. If it were, perhaps, Carmilla would have been able to practice her role for her mother more easily. However, the drawback to that is that more students equals more hilarity, more attention drawn to a school that, with its less than five thousand undergrads, is currently not attracting much notice. Though honestly, there’s not been much buzz about the missing girls in the past couple of days, chiefly because of this rapidly approaching formal. It is truly incredible, how focus has shifted away not only from the strange happenings of missing persons and various other harmful happenings, but from studies as well, all attention seeming to be focused on a ridiculous party.

Not that Carmilla isn’t looking forward to it. In her own quiet way.

It’s in the back of her mind almost constantly, her brain turning it over almost of its own accord while she’s trying to listen to a talk on some subject that she’s never really studied before (she drinks knowledge like blood, almost as equally hungry for it—even in life she had been voracious in her studies, and now with endless time stretched in front of her, there’s ample time to learn), or when she’s washing her clothes in the obscenely complicated laundry room, where the washers throw tantrums and shut off at random intervals. And especially when she’s in the room, watching Laura move about, the serene expression on her face suggesting that what Carmilla’s obsessing over hasn’t even happened. For all of her overreaction, it seems that she is working with this a lot better than Carmilla herself is.

Five nights ago, now, she’d stood right where she’s standing now. She’d been wearing pajama shorts, knee-high striped socks that made her look endearingly like a Raggedy Ann doll, a loose t-shirt falling off one of her shoulders. No bra, she never wears a bra to sleep, uncaring about the gentle points her nipples make in the neutral-colored fabric. Her hair brushed out, her feet bare with chipping polish, and her hands worrying in front of her as per usual.

“So I was thinking,” she’d started, and Carmilla had looked up from where she was reading, a thick tome of medical history. She’s not even particularly interested in science, but everything once, yes?

“Were you now,” Carmilla had said, arching a brow. Her external nature does not sway even when she’s speaking with Laura who has shaken her nature so much, at least internally.

“I mean, since…well, the formal is in a couple of weeks and I find myself dateless, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go together.” Laura had stuck her fingers in her hair and combed through it, then, a nervous habit that Carmilla had recognized easily, having seen it approximately thirteen million times the past several months. “You can think on it if you want, I j—”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes.” Carmilla had already looked back down at her book, but her answer still hung in the air, an evident and enthusiastic (or as enthusiastic as she ever got, anyway) affirmative.

“Oh,” came the response, which the vampire had not dared to look up—she can only imagine what Laura must have looked like, all tremulously hopeful. Or maybe…resigned, because this is what Carmilla can’t stop thinking about.

Laura had asked her of her own free will, that much is obvious, but what can’t be puzzled out, even by perceptive Carmilla, is intention. It’s not as if she doesn’t know how Carmilla feels about her, given the mortifying conversation while she’d been tied to the chair, the hints that she hasn’t been all that subtle about dropping. Half because Laura doesn’t seem to know how to handle it when someone likes her and this might teach her, and half because she likes seeing her all flustered because of her. It’s flattering, in a way.

So aware as she is, is she asking because she genuinely feels affection for her in return? Or is this just to exact some revenge on basketball-height English TA whose name Carmilla feels sick thinking about, whom it has become abundantly clear (hungry Carmilla, she recalls, coming back to the room late one night, approaching the door and hearing soft gasps, sighs, two voices in carnal tandem—and the consideration of feeding on ginger giant before she has a chance to finish) she also genuinely feels or at least felt affection for? Or perhaps just because, since her fight with the aforementioned sorority sister, she doesn’t have anyone to go with and has turned to her roommate, knowing that she would say yes?

All of these possibilities circle round and round and round Carmilla’s mind, especially now when she’s in toxic proximity to the girl, able to smell her perfume and see the still-healing bite wound on her neck (it’s taking too long to scab properly, Carmilla makes a mental note to procure her something for it when she’s got the time). It’s not like she’s going to ask her what she means, because that would mean admitting she’s been thinking about it, but it’s eating at her.

Laura cries out in the way she does when she’s forgotten something important, and Carmilla looks up with mild concern, just in time to see her running to her backpack, which is hanging on the door, and taking something out of the side pocket. “I almost forgot,” she says. “There was a blood drive on campus today, so, um, well. I mean, I thought of you.” And she brings the whole backpack over to the side of Carmilla’s bed, whereupon the dark-haired girl watches as she unzips the main pocket, revealing eight swollen packets of blood, all with the types stamped on their labels. “We gave blood too, LaFontaine and I, so it makes up for it!” she says, and starts unloading the sealed packets onto Carmilla’s bedsheets, and then shoves the thing she’d extracted moments earlier into your hands. “And this is…well, I said you didn’t have an opaque traveling cup, like if you wanted to take stuff on the go, but obviously it would be a bad idea to just put it in a water bottle or something…anyway, LaFontaine gave me an extra one of theirs. Sorry it has the bio major logo on it.”

Carmilla’s hands are full of blood guaranteed not to be disgusting, because of the high standards blood drives set for their donors, and a cup to put it in to boot, and she looks at Laura, whose face is lit up like the sun. “Thank you,” she says, her voice unsteady, and wonders briefly if they’re going to kiss—Laura’s close enough, looking into her eyes like she’s considering it.

But then the moment passes, and the short girl flails backwards in her rolling chair, back to her desk to write a paper that Carmilla knows is due the next day, leaving the vampire to do what vampires do—she slits one of the packets with a nail and lets it pour thickly into the cup, screwing the top on before taking a sip from the reusable straw. She sucks it down, sating her probably for the next day or two at the very least, stows the rest in a translucent container in their mini-fridge, behind Laura’s snack cakes. Just to be insolent, or maybe because it’s habit by now, Carmilla takes one and bites into it, blood and chocolate mingling pleasurably in her mouth. And, after second thought, she takes the twin of the cake currently disappearing between her teeth, crossing the room and setting it on Laura’s desk wordlessly before going back to reading.

Another hint. Carmilla doesn’t generally do things for others.

The dance is in two days. Though Laura usually doesn’t care when Carmilla pokes around her wardrobe for a shirt or jacket when she hasn’t done her laundry in a little too long, suddenly a sign shows up on it, decorated in glitter pens (of course): _Carmilla! Keep Out!_

“My dress is in there,” Laura says when Carmilla inquires about it, flicking her hair over her shoulder and flouncing towards the door. “So no peeking.”

Before Carmilla can respond with either a genuine question or a sarcastic comment (she hasn’t quite decided yet), Laura’s out of the room, going off to ask Perry for something or another. Carmilla, in her absence, tears through her own wardrobe, leaving most of it scattered viciously on the floor before she comes up with a halfway decent plan for her own outfit.

“What happened in here?” Laura asks when she comes back half an hour later with a box of tampons (Perry always seems to be forcing them on people) and a few plastic spoons—they’d run out a few days ago and had been making do with the pint of ice cream Laura had brought home with forks and bowls tipped back into inelegant mouths.

Carmilla doesn’t respond, just shrugs and gathers it all into a pile at the foot of her bed to deal with later.

The dance is in one day. Laura tells her that she’s going to go and get ready with LaFontaine, who apparently is stressing about whether to wear a dress or a suit and so wants Laura’s opinion on which will look better on them. Of course, Carmilla thinks, they’re trying to impress Perry, but LaFontaine, of course, will vigorously deny this if they were to be asked.

“Fine,” Carmilla says. “So, what, you’ll just come back here whenever you’re ready?”

“Just come get me when you are,” Laura says, sitting at her desk and performing her nightly ritual of brushing out her hair, flicking her eyes over towards Carmilla and giving her a shy little grin. “I don’t think LaFontaine will need too much help. And anyway, I’m going with you, not them.”

Carmilla doesn’t stop thinking about those words all night. She’s almost glad that when she wakes up, late as usual with her dislike of bright sunlight, Laura isn’t in the room, because she thinks she might just blurt out all of her ridiculous thoughts to her, and how embarrassing would that be? She goes to a philosophy class, comes back and sucks down another packet of blood, then brushes her teeth thoroughly afterwards, because in all of her complete and utter patheticness she envisions that in the best case scenario she’ll be kissing Laura at some point tonight and she doesn’t want the human girl to taste anything unsavory to her at that point.

She doesn’t take long to get ready. The dress she’s chosen is black, of course, with cap sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, flared skirt, lacy and detailed with shimmering ebony patterns from bust to skirt. After slipping it on, she laces up her combat boots (no need to wear uncomfortable, impractical shoes she can’t dance in), darkens her eyeshadow, redoes her eyeliner, and puts her hair up into an elegant twist. Carmilla may be vain, but she doesn’t waste overmuch time about her appearance.

Laura doesn’t, either, so when Carmilla knocks on LaFontaine’s door at a few minutes after eight o’clock (the dance has technically already started, but of course they’re not going to go right at the start when the party hasn’t kicked in yet), she’s the one that answers the door.

Carmilla is very good at not visually emoting. She’s developed the skill naturally, and it’s come in handy a multitude of times, but maybe not quite so much as this exact moment, where if she’d been a little less self-controlling her jaw would have dropped.

The dress Laura has been hiding from her is red, a deep, wine-coloured red that hugs her figure, with gold shoes and eyeshadow, her hair also up. Her neck is visible, no necklace adorning it, just the healing bite mark put there by Carmilla herself several weeks earlier, probably not even visible by this point to the undiscerning eye.

“Don’t you look like something else,” Carmilla drawls instead of going straight for the “Who granted you the right to make me feel like this with all your gross, bubbly happiness and stupid lovely face?” tack.

“Crack alert,” comes a voice from behind Laura, and both of them turn, and Carmilla sees LaFontaine, adjusting a tie on their neck, apparently having gone for the suit, which certainly is dashing on them.

“Excuse me?” Carmilla asks, arching a brow. “Crack?”

“In your façade, _cutie,_ ” LaFontaine smirks, and before Carmilla can respond Laura’s laying a hand on her shoulder, and the vampire turns her head, looking at the sweet, smiling girl who’s shaking her head.

“Come on,” she says. “LaFontaine is going to wait for Perry, we can go ahead.”

“Of course they are,” Carmilla gets in before Laura whisks her away, arm in arm.

“Hi,” Laura says, when they’re out of the dorm building, briskly walking towards the dining hall, which has apparently been transmuted for the night into a romantic location for a formal. Carmilla doesn’t frequent the building—in fact, she’s probably been more in the past few months than she has in the past eighty years attending the university on and off, just because Laura had put on those puppy eyes and asked if she would come with her, said that she didn’t want to eat alone and besides what if the big scary vampires came and got her? (“And what, then, does that make me?” Carmilla had asked, almost offended, whereupon she had gotten the response “a big cute softie of a vampire” and ruminated over it for days.)

“Hello,” Carmilla says, looking slightly down at the shorter girl, allowing a little smile to turn up on the corner of her mouth. “You look…” She’s about to say positively edible, but something instinctual tells her to lay off the vampire puns, just for this one line. “You look wonderful,” she winds up saying instead, and the blush and glance downwards that results from those words is worth the serious moment.

“You too,” Laura says, and they’re still arm in arm as they reach the door, presenting the tickets that Carmilla had stolen (no need in buying them when you have super-speed and sticky fingers). They are ushered into the hall, which actually is nicer than usual, with golden sconces of light, a dance floor, tables to sit at and eat arbitrary little snacks. “Let’s dance,” Laura says right away, and who is Carmilla to deny?

The dean is nowhere in sight, which Carmilla is thankful for. It’s the last thing she needs to have her mother see how…fond that she’s gotten of Laura Hollis, because any fool can probably tell when they’re on the dance floor and Laura’s fitting herself into her arms like she’s been there more than once before.

Carmilla takes up waltz position immediately, just out of habit, whereupon Laura laughs and slaps her hands down softly. “No, silly,” she says. “This isn’t the turn of the nineteenth century. This is a college dance, and the music is far too electronic for anything like that.” Carmilla looks around, and most people are dancing even closer than waltzing, back to front, bodies moving together. And she’s hardly got a chance to even wonder if Laura would be okay with that before the smaller girl is moving against her, manipulating her arm so that it loops around her waist, whereupon Carmilla gets the hint and draws her in, her nose level with that sweet-smelling hair, feeling soft skin against her own.

“There we go,” Laura leans back to whisper to her, and Carmilla shivers, ever so slightly, even though the dance floor is unseasonably warm with all the bodies moving around it. They dance like that until Carmilla thinks she might burst into flames with the heat in her stomach, feeling a playful side of Laura that feels a whole lot like an answer to the question she’s been turning over for these past days, on motivation for asking her to this dance.

Still, she likes verbal affirmation, and this position, alluring and hell, arousing as it is, doesn’t really bode well to that.

Luckily, or maybe ironically, a few fast songs later, a slow one comes on in perfect waltz tempo, definitely not traditional waltzing music (something about making love oh so slow) but sufficient for Carmilla to pull Laura into the close position, facing each other, moving about with small steps in their own little bubble of space. Laura laughs.

“You just have to have things your own way,” she says, and Carmilla shrugs, keeping her eyes fixed on her.

“Or maybe I just want to see that face of yours instead of the back of your head,” she responds. One-two-three, one-two-three, and… “Why did you ask me? To this dance, I mean?”

Laura bursts out laughing, effectively messing up both her and Carmilla’s footwork, and the two of them have to right themselves and start again before Carmilla gets to know Laura’s answer. “Well,” she says when it comes, “why do you think? I should think that would be pretty obvious, given that I’m literally having 1698 intercourse with you. Your words, not mine!”

Carmilla laughs, accentuating the point by drawing her closer, spinning her on the spot and letting the hand on the small of her back drift just a little lower. “Sure, but you can be a vengeful little thing sometimes, and I’m pretty sure that’s your TA dancing with Aminah Desmond over there.”

Laura doesn’t even look. “This isn’t about Danny,” she says clearly. “Look…that’s…that happened. I still feel affection for her, but I don’t want to take it any further right now. Right now, I just want to…see where this is going. Where we’re going.”

There’s the answer that Carmilla’s been puzzling over, torturing herself over for so many days, and it’s said so matter-of-factly that the vampire can’t help but laugh a little.

“Well,” she says, as she and Laura revolve together, hands clasped, eyes meeting, intimately close. “I guess that answers my question then.”

“Guess it does,” Laura says, and smiles in a way that makes Carmilla want to lean down and…

“I really want to kiss you right now,” she says, her voice suddenly inexplicably breathless, the crack in her façade that LaFontaine had pointed out becoming a fatal flaw, letting the whole thing fall briefly away. How drawn is she to this human girl, how inexplicably drawn, a moth to a flame, a child to a sweet. 

And then Laura is leaning up and kissing her, ever so softly, and she smells like she did the night that Carmilla took blood from her, but now their proximity is consensual and much more romantic, with her gentle mouth on Carmilla’s own, which goes embarrassingly pliable as she responds, holding her close. Their feet stutter to a halt, their hands still hovering in the air, and they’re kissing for long, long moments.

Carmilla is just glad, she thinks, hazily as Laura stands on her toes, tilts her head and traces a careful tongue over her bottom lip, that she had brushed her teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I'm grantarot on tumblr, so drop me a comment (or a review here!) or a prompt for another fic!


End file.
